We all know about Chuck McRae and his increasing desire to flip the symbolic bird at his colleagues and the Mississippi citizenry as he does his own version of ³You Can Take This Job and Shove It² while exiting the public stage. But the recent hearings don¹t portray several of the other judges in a much better light. Threats of duking it out outside. Profanity. General childishness, name calling and immaturity.

I have been following the Mississippi courts now for over a decade. I have read many opinions. I have heard many confidential stories. We have some good judges, but we have some really bad ones too. The fact of the matter is that our courts are really not much better than our legislature, despite the robes. Both are inherently political entities. The attempts by the courts to appear above the fray is nothing but a slick illusion.

You can log on to the Mississippi Supreme Court web site and read the opinions, which are case studies in terrible writing. The sentences wind on so long you can¹t possibly follow them. There is seemingly no end to the superficial jargon and high-faluting lingo. Good writing is simply clear thinking. The terrible prose in the court opinions are the manifestation of the befuddled thinking underlying the whole body of judicial law.

Which is just perfect for the judges. All the jargon and dense rot just make it that much easier to hide the big favor to the campaign contributor. There¹s always a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed law clerk ready to find a legal justification for the most crass venality.

One case I read involved a professional slip-and-fall con artist. During his deposition, the con artist lied and said he never had slipped and sued before. Turns out he had filed a suit just six months before. The fine local judge threw the case out because the plaintiff was a fraud. The plaintiff¹s attorney appealed to the Supreme Court. Four members ruled that it was too harsh to throw the entire case out just because the guy lied in one deposition. Unbelievable.

In another slip-and-fall case, the plaintiff had already had all her medical injuries paid for in full through Medicaid, in addition to a fair amount of money for her pain and suffering. But she sued for medical damages anyway, even though the federal government had already paid for them. Our esteemed court ruled that the defense could not inform the jury that the plaintiff was already compensated in full and that she never paid a dime in medical bills. So she got reimbursed for the medical bills that the taxpayers paid.

In another case, two business partners agreed to arbitrate any disputes. It was unclear who was supposed to pay what part of the arbitration costs. The supreme court threw out the whole arbitration agreement because of a dispute over one small aspect of it. The courts hate arbitration because it erodes their authority, just like public school administrators hate the idea of vouchers or charter schools. So what¹s going on with all these cockamamie decisions? Are some of our top judges that dense? Oh no. Not dense at all, rather sly like a fox. These judges know what side their bread is buttered on. They know how to work the system. They know what¹s in their best interest.

Some of it is simple to see. The judges get campaign contributions. They are going to help their benefactors. Some of it is long-range planning. The judges know that when they retire, it will be payback time. Those they help will send clients their way and cut them in on lucrative mass torts.
There are hundreds of judges in Mississippi. A few are probably corrupt. I have no proof of this but I have heard many stories and seen a lot of smoke. And then a lot of it is professional courtesy. These folks are all lawyers, every last one of them. They went to the same schools, studied the same material, hung out in the same watering holes. They have the same mentality, which can be summed up in this sentence: No dispute is ever too frivolous to bill thousands of hours over.

Just imagine if the newspaper publishers of Mississippi could make their own rules, set their own rates and have the full power of the law behind them. I guarantee you there wouldn¹t be many successful libel suits and our profits would be healthy. Journalists would be doing as well as, say, lawyers!

I have only heard of one lawsuit being thrown out as frivolous. It was this recent lawsuit against all the bigwig plaintiffs¹ attorneys allegedly shortchanging their poor clients on some of the big Jefferson County mass torts. How perfect. There are so many great judges and attorneys in Mississippi. These fine men and women are the ones most appalled. They see it first hand and it sickens them.

The recent moves to limit legal advertising is a step in the right direction. This is not a free enterprise, free speech issue. Attorneys have a unique governmental role that must be regulated. It needs to get back to being a profession and not a cash cow. And, of course, we need a new way of selecting judges. An independent nominating board should pick five nominees of which the governor chooses one. The public can then confirm or not confirm the nominee every four years at the ballot box.

(Wyatt Emmerich is president of Emmerich Newspapers and publisher of The Nortside Sun.)